Change Your Space, Change Your Culture - Hardcover

by Rex Miller (Author), Mabel Casey (Author), Mark Konchar (Author)

The fastest, easiest way to shift culture toward engagement and productivity

Change Your Space, Change Your Culture is a guide to transforming business by rethinking the workplace. Written by a team of trail-blazing leaders, this book reveals the secrets of companies that discovered the power of culture and space. This insightful guide reveals what companies lose by viewing office space as something to manage or minimize. With practical tips and implementation details, the book helps the reader see that the workspace is, in fact, a crucial driver of productivity and morale.

Change Your Space, Change Your Culture was born out of recent studies that expose truly outrageous "Oh, my God" realities:

• More than 70 percent of the workforce either hates their job or they are just going through the motions.
• Half of all office space is wasted.

Those shattering facts exist because office space is generally regarded as "overhead" or "sunk cost." Most buildings today clearly communicate the low priority placed on people-friendly design. Poor workforce engagement is baked into the culture. This book provides guidance on turning this around, by rethinking and reshaping space to align with the way people work. Specifically, this book moves from the high-altitude view down to the details on how to:

1. Discover the fastest, easiest and most cost-effective way to shift culture
2. Add square footage by using space more effectively
3. Boost employee engagement and vitality by the creative use of space
4. Learn how space can become a powerful productivity tool

We all know that design, space, and flow have a powerful effect on the human psyche. Our homes, museums, sports arenas, places of worship, and even airport terminals reveal that. Environment can inspire dread or enthusiasm, distraction or focus, collaboration or isolation. That's why the office must be designed to inspire the desired culture and workflow - if it's not properly designed, no program, training or rules will be effective over time. Change Your Space, Change Your Culture is the practical guide to office space, the foundation of an engaging culture.

Front Jacket

Recent studies have exposed some scary and dangerous realities about the workplace:

• More than 70 percent of the workforce either hates their job or they are just going through the motions
• Half of all office space is wasted

The dimensions of this crisis sparked a high drama pursuit for answers. Like big city detectives, leaders from well-known and respected American companies raced to stop the killer of collaboration and creativity. Then they discovered strategies to turn the workplace into a landscape of innovation.

This book is the outcome.

We know that employee engagement is the key to innovation; workers must care about the job at hand. But what do you do when dreariness and disconnection are baked into the workplace? How does business change the culture, leading to places of creativity, resiliency, and growth?

The leaders behind this story learned that the answer has been hiding in plain sight, that office space itself can be the portal of significant change. Months of original research and fieldwork all led to the breakthrough insight that business must redesign the spaces where old and dangerous habits live.

The authors expose deadly flaws in the way office space is commonly approached, bid, and designed. The whole process has been trapped in the sclerotic thinking of space as "sunk costs." Which leads to the practical conclusion that design is not important, only minimizing the cost of design. That has led to workplaces as soul-killing environments of stressed, fragmented, and disengaged workers.

However, by designing space as a flexible, open, and engaging workplace, employees reconnect with the work.

Back Jacket

Recent studies have exposed some scary and dangerous realities about the workplace:

• More than 70 percent of the workforce either hates their job or they are just going through the motions
• Half of all office space is wasted

The dimensions of this crisis sparked a high drama pursuit for answers. Like big city detectives, leaders from well-known and respected American companies raced to stop the killer of collaboration and creativity. Then they discovered strategies to turn the workplace into a landscape of innovation.

This book is the outcome.

We know that employee engagement is the key to innovation; workers must care about the job at hand. But what do you do when dreariness and disconnection are baked into the workplace? How does business change the culture, leading to places of creativity, resiliency, and growth?

The leaders behind this story learned that the answer has been hiding in plain sight, that office space itself can be the portal of significant change. Months of original research and fieldwork all led to the breakthrough insight that business must redesign the spaces where old and dangerous habits live.

The authors expose deadly flaws in the way office space is commonly approached, bid, and designed. The whole process has been trapped in the sclerotic thinking of space as "sunk costs." Which leads to the practical conclusion that design is not important, only minimizing the cost of design. That has led to workplaces as soul-killing environments of stressed, fragmented, and disengaged workers.

However, by designing space as a flexible, open, and engaging workplace, employees reconnect with the work.

Author Biography

REX MILLER, the principal and thought leader for mindSHIFT, is widely recognized in the science of workplace innovation. He is winner of the 2009 CoreNet Global Innovator of the Year award. Rex helped create the mindSHIFT consortium of top executives from America's largest construction and architecture companies and their unprecedented investigation into how the workplace can create--or undermine--culture shift. They discovered that space, engagement, and culture shift go hand in hand. But until Change Your Space, Change Your Culture, the space-culture connection has been a well-kept secret of major innovators like Google, Cummins Inc., and W.L. Gore. This book reveals how they do it.

MABEL CASEY has led Global Marketing and Innovation for Haworth, Inc. since 2006. She and her team are focused on driving Haworth toward deeper alignment with customer needs and exploring how business leaders can utilize their spaces to support the people, culture, and outcomes of their organization. Mabel has more than a decade of executive-level experience in the contract furnishings industry. Haworth improves workplaces with award-winning furniture, interior architecture, and technology solutions to support collaboration, innovation, and culture trans-formations. Research and design drive a deep understanding of agile workplace needs and are at the center of the company's strategy.

MARK Konchar is the Chief of Enterprise Development for Balfour Beatty Construction and leads the company's national Capability Center team. This team supports the company with research and development, learning, technology improvement, energy performance, public-private partnerships, federal contracting and legislation, strategic marketing and client advocacy. Balfour Beatty Construction is an innovation leader, sits in the top three of US General Contractors and is part of Balfour Beatty, a global investment and infrastructure firm based in London.